The Garden of Death

In the Garden of Death, Finnish " Kuoleman Puutarha " is a watercolor painter Hugo Simberg Finnish, which was created in 1896. It belongs to the collection of the Finnish National Gallery and is located in the Ateneum, Helsinki. Topic of the paper is the impartiality of death, which is shown as a helper and guardian of the human soul.

Image content

The only 15.8 times 17.5 cm big leaf shows three skeletons dressed in dark coats that stand between raised beds and devote himself there with devotion to the care of the flowers and trees. Death, here represented by these three figures, seen not as brutal as gentle reaper but the Grim Reaper. Hugo Simberg processed here motifs of the fairy tale story of a mother of Hans Christian Andersen. Each flower and each tree represents a human life that is taken care of attention from death and transplanted after the death of the man from death to paradise. So pour the left figure carefully entrusted to him plants and right of center presses one of the figures with bony hands gently one of the flowers to his chest.

Classification in contract work

The theme of death garden can be found several times in the work of Hugo Simberg. The most common presentation is likely to be the fresco in the Cathedral of Tampere, the Hugo Simberg painted in 1905 and 1906. It differs from watercolor only by a different color. The personified death as well as the "poor devils" are motifs that are often found in the work of Hugo Simberg. The illustrations are often macabre and show supernatural scenes. One of these works include " Death is listening" (Finnish Kuolema kuuntelee ), in which the dressed in black death tilts its head to listen to a young man playing the violin. In the background an old woman lying on the bed, which acts pale and sickly. The picture gives the viewer the impression that death has come to fetch her, but that he has chosen, nor to wait a moment to let the young man quit his violin playing.

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